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  • 5 weeks ago
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00:00Women who change the world.
00:30Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be.
00:36Rosa Luxemburg.
00:38Luxemburg was born on the 5th of March, 1871, in Zamosk.
00:42The Luxemburg family were Polish Jews living in Russian-controlled Poland.
00:47She was the fifth and youngest child of timber trader Elias Luxemburg and Linnaeus Loewenstein.
00:53Luxemburg later stated that her father imparted an interest in liberal ideas in her,
00:58while her mother was religious and well-read with books kept at home.
01:02The family spoke German and Polish, and Luxemburg also learned Russian.
01:06The family moved to Warsaw in 1873.
01:10After being bedridden with a hip ailment at the age of five, she was left with a permanent limp.
01:15Starting in 1880, Luxemburg attended a gymnasium.
01:19From 1886, she belonged to the Polish left-wing Proletariat Party, founded in 1882, anticipating
01:27the Russian parties by 20 years.
01:30She began political activities by organizing a general strike.
01:34As a result, four of the Proletariat Party leaders were put to death, and the party was
01:40disbanded, though the remaining members, including Luxemburg, kept meeting in secret.
01:45In 1887, she passed her Matura, secondary school graduation, examinations.
01:52After fleeing to Switzerland to escape detention in 1889, she attended the University of Zurich,
01:59where she studied philosophy, history, politics, economics, and mathematics.
02:04In 1898, after marrying Gustav Lübeck to obtain German citizenship, she settled in Berlin
02:11to work with the largest and most powerful constituent party of the Second International,
02:16the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
02:19Almost at once, she jumped into the revisionist controversy that divided the party.
02:24The Russian Revolution of 1905 proved to be the central experience in Luxemburg's life.
02:31Until then, she had believed that Germany was the country in which world revolution was most likely
02:36to originate.
02:37She now believed it would catch fire in Russia.
02:40She went to Warsaw, participated in the struggle, and was imprisoned.
02:45From these experiences emerged her theory of revolutionary mass action,
02:50which she propounded in the mass strike, the political party, and the trade unions.
02:55The organization's theoretical basis was Luxemburg's pamphlet,
03:01Die Christe der Sozialdemokratie, 1916, The Crisis in the German Social Democracy,
03:08written in prison under the pseudonym Junius.
03:11In this work, she agreed with Lenin in advocating the overthrow of the existing regime
03:17and the formation of a new international, strong enough to prevent a renewed outbreak of mass slaughter.
03:23The actual influence of the Spartacus group during the war, however, remained small.
03:29Released from prison by the German Revolution, November of 1918,
03:33Luxemburg and Liebknecht immediately began agitation to force the new order to the left.
03:40They exercised considerable influence on the public,
03:43and were a contributing factor in a number of armed clashes in Berlin.
03:47As a result, Luxemburg was vilified as Bloody Rosa in the bourgeois press.
03:54Like the Bolsheviks, Luxemburg and Liebknecht demanded political power for the workers' and soldiers' Soviets,
04:01but were frustrated by the conservative socialist establishment and the army.
04:05In fact, her Derushish Revolution, 1922, the Russian Revolution,
04:12chastised Lenin's party on its agrarian and national self-determination stands,
04:17and its dictatorial and terrorist methods.
04:21Luxemburg always remained a believer in democracy,
04:24as opposed to Lenin's democratic centralism.
04:27She was never able, however, to exercise a decisive influence on the new party.
04:32Because of their role in fomenting a communist uprising known as the Spartacus Revolt,
04:38she and Liebknecht were arrested and murdered in Berlin on January 15, 1919,
04:45by members of the Free Corps, a loose assemblage of conservative paramilitary groups.
04:55Women Who Changed the World
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